Neighbors Seek to Prevent Return of Chumley’s to Greenwich Village

Jim Miller had looked forward to 2014. He believed it was the year he would finally reopen Chumley’s, the well-known Greenwich Village bar that has been closed since a wall collapsed in 2007.

Now he faces a new roadblock: Though the State Liquor Authority has approved a new liquor license for the bar, a speakeasy in the Depression and later a haunt for the likes of John Steinbeck, E. E. Cummings and Norman Mailer, neighbors have filed a lawsuit challenging that decision.

Chumley’s, at 86 Bedford Street, had to reapply because its liquor license expired in 2009, two years after it shut down. The liquor authority approved the application after Community Board 2 added several conditions, including closing times of 2 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 1 a.m. the other nights. The liquor authority also accepted Chumley’s promise that it would “maintain security” in the front and post a doorman inside, and would close the kitchen an hour before closing time.

“I’ve made assurances every step of the way — through the block association and in public forums at Community Board 2 — that we will conduct ourselves properly,” Mr. Miller said on Wednesday. “I’m a reasonable man. I understand the concept of quiet enjoyment of your home and your neighborhood.”

But his assurances were not enough for the nearly 50 neighbors who went to court.

They said in court papers filed on Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that Chumley’s was too close to other bars and restaurants to qualify for a liquor license. They said that under state law, a liquor license cannot be granted if the new establishment is within 500 feet of three or more bars or restaurants; there are already 21 licensed establishments within that distance of Chumley’s, they said.

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Chumley’s has been closed since a wall collapsed in 2007.CreditMarilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

“The neighborhood has more than enough places to eat and drink,” the neighbors said in court papers. “This block cannot tolerate another drinking venue.” They said that Chumley’s location in the middle of a largely residential block was “inappropriate” for a liquor license and “would not provide any special benefits to the community.”

They also took issue with the crowd at Chumley’s before it closed, describing the bar as a less-than-good neighbor that was “a major destination for tourists, undergraduates and barhopping bridge-and-tunnel partygoers.” Despite the fact that it has been closed for years, guidebooks still mention it and tourists still seek out its famously unmarked entrance.

“The experience of local residents with late-night bars in the area — unruly, drunk and extremely loud groups of young patrons congregating on the streets, smoking and littering and disrupting pedestrian traffic — underscores the threat to this quiet and charming residential block,” the court papers said. “Even if the patrons are not rowdy, they will necessarily disrupt the peace and quiet that neighborhood residents are entitled to enjoy in the post-midnight hours.”

The repairs to Chumley’s 19th-century building — and to adjacent buildings damaged in the collapse of the wall — took far longer than expected. Mr. Miller first hoped to reopen in a couple of months, then in a year, then in two years. The bar and the tables from Chumley’s, along with the photographs that were on the walls, went into storage in 2008.

The liquor authority approved the license in October. “We’ve done everything asked of us by the community board, by the block association, by the State Liquor Authority, by the City Council speaker’s office when it was her area,” he said, referring to Christine C. Quinn, who represented the neighborhood until she left the Council at the end of 2013. “Every concession, every compromise. We cut our hours shorter, we agreed to additional security.”

Mr. Miller, a firefighter who started as a part-time bartender and ended up running the place, also took issue with the neighbors’ characterization of the crowd at Chumley’s. “We had a very eclectic blend of people,” he said. “It was an older crowd. We had some tourists who wanted to see something special, but we were not a young, rowdy place. The assertion that we were a loud, raucous place where young people went to blow off steam, that’s not who we were.”

“For some,” Mr. Miller said, “the only answer to what they want would be our total demise or extinction. That’s not something I can give into.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Neighbors Seek to Prevent Return of Chumley’s. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe